I've owned Samsung phones for years and never had this problem until September. Since switching to the Galaxy Z Fold 2 I've had nothing but problems staying connected to my watch. I've tried phone resets, network resets, deleting bluetooth connections, stopping bluetooth and watch apps from being put to sleep, countless phone and watch resets, and the problem persists. I've had this problem on 2 different Z Fold 2 phones, 2 different Galaxy Watch 3 watches and a Gear S3. Samsung support has been of no help whatsoever to this point.
I don't have the galaxy watch so I really may not be of any help. When I first ran the search for the Galaxy Z Fold2 your article came up and because you spoke extensively about the phone, I replied. Is there another phone in your household to connect your galaxy watch to, and report the difference in connection? In fact is there a close friend or relative that has a different phone that you could give us the connectivity observation ? There is a thing in electronics troubleshooting that one can never draw a conclusion until something works like it is supposed to, even if it is simmulated.
Is your watch connected through bluetooth, a wifi environment, or strictly through phone service? Can you tell how good of a phone service reception you are getting where the watch is kept and where the phone is in the house? What location usually associates with the lost connection? On what occassion or application most correlate with a lost connection? For example, while the the watch was asleep and you awaken it to find it is disconnected; while using the phone feature; while uploading a video; while monitoring sleep or exercise? Under any suspected circumstance, how long before the disconnection occurs? For example, if the function or application is using it as a phone, then how long after using it as a phone does the disconnection occur? Does environmental factors such as daylight, clouds, temperature - winter or summer, humidity - cooking, showering, washing, driving, nearby mountains or valleys, static from laying on the bed or carpet, actions like getting in or out of a car or sitting in a certain chair; what events can you associate with the disconnection either before or after?
I suspect that I have a limited time or content so I am breaking it up into smaller bites.
In a previous session, battery lifespan became an issue in watches. So how long does the charge of your battery for your watch lasts and how often do you need to charge it? Whenever a disconnection occurs, what quantity of battery charge do you usually observe?
The heating effect has also been discussed. Do you use a charging device that was supplied with the watch or do you use a faster charging device? Have you ever lost connection while the watch is being charged and if so what percent of the time?
The issue of permissible gigabytes of data used before slower access is enforced requires some probing. Do you find most of your disconnections occur near to when your phone bill is due or during a certain time of the month? What sort of a data plan did you agree to and how would this affect the contract of the watch?
Good morning, thanks for the thorough response. It is a lot to respond to so hopefully I cover everything.
1. I don't have another phone to test with currently. I have however used two different Z Fold 2 phones that have had this issue and read about other models having similar issues.
2. My watch is the LTE version but is connected via bluetooth, Wi-Fi is turned off. I borrowed a friend's Gear S3 while I sent my first Galaxy Watch 3 to Samsung and the Gear S3 had the same connection issues.
3. Location doesn't appear to matter. It happens in the car, all over my house, at my desk at work (including 10 minutes ago). The phone is usually within a few feet of the watch when it disconnects.
4. Charging, I usually charge each night on a Samsung provided charger. Battery level depends on how often it disconnects. If it happens often then it drains much faster. If it only happens a handful of times in a day then the battery life is pretty good.
5. Data plan shouldn't be related as it happened on a Wi-Fi version watch as well as on my first Galaxy Watch 3 which was LTE but no data plan so it was connected via bluetooth.
From what you have stated, it would be common sense to narrow the connection issue to a bluetooth problem. Now the technology of bluetooth has its own limitations and reliability strengths and weaknesses: at best, transferring data back and forth to a little watch could be quirky. While an amplified signal to a bluetooth speaker is easy, the little watch may not have the size or capacity dedicated to amplifying its receiving signal or the signal it is sending back to the phone. Then the signals themselves have to match perfectly and sort of trained like a garage door opener that should open just your garage and not your neighbors.
While a music signal is reasonably simple, the richness or complexity of the signals back and forth to the watch is termed talking and to protect the data and privacy a built in key will disconnect and prevent an intrusion or foreign unauthorize access. Without getting too technical, here are some tricks to get around bluetooth: 1. If you use the phone's bluetooth for your car, music speaker, other phones, house security, office equipment like a printer, then be very careful when you connect the watch because if the watch gets in the vicinity of those other appliances, they will sort of fight for the signal and I don't believe the little watch is going to come out as a winner. To prevent this fight you may have to erase the other targets, keys or identification interests from your phone's bluetooth memory. I am not going to tell you at this point that the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is better than the iphone with its synchronization, priority or even discovery. In fact I miss the layout, the notification, the exact discerning precision and perhaps power of its bluetooth selection, but all that isn't going to help you enjoy what you already have and want to keep.
2. On the other hand if the watch was ever paired with a other bluetooth device, it can remember it and prioritize it, if it was the last.
I may have already exceeded my time or word count so before I touch on environment, barriers or obstructions I will post now with a quick tip: on the Galaxy Z Fold 2 button for Blutooth in the connections section of settings, you can select or turn off bluetooth; it tells you nothing; but if you should carefully select or press in the blank space between the white/blue button and the word Bluetooth then wahlah, you should be able now to see a lot more info as to what the phone's bluetooth memory, priority, pairing choices is deciphering; and don't forget to scroll all the way to the bottom to discover all the other foreign unauthorized bluetooth signals that are trying to intrude. If you were unsuccessful when you first press, then do a sort of click click double press or even a triple press.
Lowery23, on 3/17 you mentioned in your paragraph 2, that "WiFi is turned off. Could you explain this situation or decision? Does your house, office and gym have no WiFi? Did you turn off the Wi-Fi feature or capability on the watch and if so why?
Hello, I was just referring to me not setting up Wi-Fi on the watch itself.
I'm doing some testing now as I believe it may be battery optimization causing the problem. I pulled the logs from the phone and noticed references to Wakelocks right before the Bluetooth service crashes. I've disabled all battery optimization to see if the problem goes away.
Thank you for that information. If the battery optimization doesn't fix the symptoms you are experiencing. I would recommend submitting an error report using the Samsung Members app so they can look at the error log for the connection between your Galaxy watch and your Galaxy Z fold 2.
Be sure to click " ✓ Accept as Solution" when you find an answer that works for you.
Please note, notification emails are a DO NOT REPLY address, you must log-in on the community page in order to respond.
Sweet! I actually think that you are on to something, and not just you. I sort of recall someone complaining how his or her watch would charge up then kick off line then using up a tremendous amount of charge to enable it to come back on line, and then needing charge again in vicious cycle: I bet it is related to this optimization setting.
